My LFS sucks

[Buehlz]

I bought a skunk cleaner shrimp and brought it home and aclimated it for 20-30 min by dripping water and I put it in the tank and with in a hour it is dead.... all the rest of my invertibre are ok.... Tested the tank and nothing is out of the ordinary.... LFS claims that I am SOL.... How shabby of them... Guess I will not be going there any more since I have learned my $18 lesson... all the other fish stores in town give ATLEAST a 24 hr on all fish including saltwater

[Alice]

Sorry you lost your shrimp

Many SW stores don't give a guarantee on SW animals at all, although depending on the store, some of them will work with the customer on some kind of refund/replacement deal even if it's just partial store credit. It all depends on store policy, I guess.

[Buehlz]

that is the sad thing.... put it in a watched the tank.... nothing went near him.... I wouldnt be so mad but it died in ONE hour.... wouldnt complain if it was over night or a week or two

[JennM]

Originally posted by Buehlz
I bought a skunk cleaner shrimp and brought it home and aclimated it for 20-30 min by dripping water and I put it in the tank and with in a hour it is dead.... all the rest of my invertibre are ok.... Tested the tank and nothing is out of the ordinary.... LFS claims that I am SOL.... How shabby of them... Guess I will not be going there any more since I have learned my $18 lesson... all the other fish stores in town give ATLEAST a 24 hr on all fish including saltwater

A shrimp is not a fish. Most places don't guarantee inverts, even if they guarantee fish. And as Alice said, many stores would be willing to work with the customer if there was any benefit of the doubt to be given.

What are your parameters? Especially what is your SG versus the LFS? And pH too..... these are the things that are usually vastly different from one tank to the next.

Are you sure it was dead and not a moult? Many shrimp moult during shipping or shortly after. If it's a moult, the shrimp could be hiding until his new shell hardens.

Jenn

[Buehlz]

I am pretty sure it is not a moult it still has legs and the feelers on its head..... The SG of my tank is 1.024 and the LFS I am not sure but I drip acclimated him so he could get used to the temp and the SG of my water....

[JennM]

A moult is exactly like the actual shrimp. The moult does not have eyeballs - but it has everything else, antennae, legs, crustaceans have external skeletons (exoskeletons) so any moving part must have skeletal structure - so the entire shrimp has a shell.

It's rare that I lose a shrimp, in transit or in acclimating to my system. I rarely have anybody lose one after taking it home, and the couple of times that I can remember, it was because another fish decided to snack....

That is not to say it is impossible that it died, just that given your careful acclimation, I'd still wonder if it's a moult.

Jenn

[kram138]

Originally posted by JennM
A moult is exactly like the actual shrimp. The moult does not have eyeballs - but it has everything else, antennae, legs, crustaceans have external skeletons (exoskeletons) so any moving part must have skeletal structure - so the entire shrimp has a shell.

Jenn

It seems like I've been quoting you all day Jenn.

This is a funny story relating to moulting.

I woke the other morning and before I had coffee I looked in on the tank and saw my cleaner shrimp being envelopes by my LTA. I was shocked and really *issed. I like my LTA but I really liked my cleaner shrimp because it's been with me a long time. Just as I was about to reach in and strangle that anenome, my shrimp comes walking out from behind the rocks. That was quite a relief.

I know, probably not that funny, but it was funny to me.

Mark

[JennM]

I've actually had a quiet day - first one in a long time, so I'm yacking it up over here at TRT

Somewhere I have a photo of my (late) cleaner that I lost during the flatworm debacle.... in the picture he's standing at his usual cleaning station, but right below him is his moult. I captioned it, "I'm a shadow of my former self"

Jenn

shrimp need a slow acclimation over an hr if not more

[Buehlz]

How active are sea Urchins? I got one of them also and he moved under a rock and really havent seen him move since

[yardboy]

That was really sh***ty of the lfs, but unfortunately, it could have been your fault. I also bought a cleaner shrimp and only "slightly" acclimated him (turkey baster squirt every five minutes for 30 minutes) and he was dead the next morning. Tried two more that were shipped from California and followed their instructions (similar procedure with turkey baster but for an hour) and they've been alive for 6 months now! I was told that inverts are always much more sensitive than fish or corals.
Doesn't change the fact that your shrimp is dead and the lfs is crappy. I'd not go back there again either.
Now if I can just figure out how to keep a firefish alive. They have shown me all the ways they can die, so far. Take a while before I buy another.

[JennM]

Acclimation of a creature after a SHORT trip from the LFS and acclimation of a creature after a LONG ride overnight or longer in a bag are two totally different things.

You all would cringe, but except for delicate organisms like sea stars (which we drip acclimate for about 20 minutes), most everything we get is float and tank. Float them for 10 minutes or until we get to them, then open the bag and tank. Now, we keep our salinity lower, as do our suppliers, but the pH in a bag that's been in transit for a long time, will be VERY low. When you open the bag, the pH begins to shoot up, ammonia will shoot up and you can get a whole mess of chemical reactions that can be detrimental to the creature if you leave them in the bag water for hours while you acclimate. I had this discussion with a biologist wholesaler a long while back, because we used to painstakingly acclimate everything slowly - and we were having lots of mortality. He suggested the float and tank method for organisms that had travelled long hours in bags - and since then we've had virtually no mortality. We do a visual on the animal before the bag is open - if it looks healthy, we tank it. If it looks iffy, we tank it in our treatment system. We do not lose fish or inverts that looked healthy, because of a fast acclimation. This applies to shrimp too - I can probably count on one hand the number of DOA/DAA shrimp in the last year and a half.

My money is still on a moult.

I should add that many hobbyists' tanks are at a higher specific gravity than LFS systems, so care should be taken to bring the salinity up for the animal somewhat carefully, but I've never seen a need to acclimate over the course of HOURS - IMO that acclimates a creature right to death - especially if they've been in the bag 12 hours or more.

Jenn

[Toadfish]

IMO if your LFS cared about your business they would have at least refunded half of your money. They are marking that thing up 300-500% anyway so by spliting the difference with you, they don't lose a penny and generate or retain a customer. Lousy customer service like the majority of LFS's out there.

[Casey]

well I have had the best luck with shrimp when I just turn off the lights and throw them in i stopped acclimated them long time ago and have had better luck i think a slow drip aclimation is more stressful especially when it has been in the bag 12 hrs already.

[tdwyatt]

Originally posted by Casey
well I have had the best luck with shrimp when I just turn off the lights and throw them in i stopped acclimated them long time ago and have had better luck i think a slow drip aclimation is more stressful especially when it has been in the bag 12 hrs already.

although this may be true, esp when bringing specimens from a wholesaler to a lfs (very similar salinities), bringing a specimen from a low salinity envrronment to a high salinity environment is quite stressful, especially on crustaceans in general (not to mention echinoderms and Tridacnidae). Plenty of documentation on this, and although fishes may benefit from living in low salinity environs for short periods of time (as it rids them of parasites), most of the other creatures we keep in our systems have evolved specifically to be in 35 ppt salinities and do not have mechanisms for dealing with moving through environments of differing salinities. This stress often accounts for the exhibited molting of many crustacean species when transported or immediately after transport. Survival is much higher in creatures slowly acclimated from a lfs to home (short trip and short time in bag) than the float-and-dump method. If transport time is short, and ammonia accumulation is low, longer acclimitization is preferred, even better would be purchacing your inverts and misc other specimens from systems at 35ppt (clams should only be purchaced from tanks where the system salinity is 35 ppt, as even small variations in salinity for more than the breifest period of time will result in failure to expand the mantle, and prolonged time there will result in the ultimate demise of the specimen). Prolonged transport time resulting in low pH reduces the toxicity of ammonia and ammonium ions, such that when acclimitization results in increasing the pH, it increases the toxicity of ammonia 10 x for every increase of 1 pH unit (2 = 100x, 3 = 1000x) by reducing the ionization of the ammonia, which increases its ability to permeate biological membranes. A bag containing high levels (>0.75-1.0 mg/l) of ammonia at a pH of 6 may be irritating to a specimen, but not necessary lethal, but increasing the pH to aquarium levels in the presence of that same concentration of ammonia will burn gill tissues and kill.

The upshot? I will depend on where your specimens are coming from, how they were transported, if they were fed prior to transport, the amount of seawater in the bag, the salinity of the bagged water and that of the aquarium the specimen is introduced into, and the type of specimen being transported. If the trip is short and the bag volume is large (and the specimen small), drip acclimitization is preferred, however, trips of 6 or more hours begin to push the limits, especially if the volume is small and/or the specimen is large. Best for questionable specimens to test both salinity and ammonia and pH of both bag and the new home prior to making a decision on your introduction methodology.

For more info, check Steven Spotte's book, it is much more specific (I think this is where the info is, as I still cannot locate mine to check this reference).

HTH, I would suspect the acclimitization of crustaceans from a lfs if the specimen died in this short a timeframe (or that the specimen was questionable to start with if salinity was similar)